New at this

[Shelia L. Hicks]

Is having 6 postpartum patients ( one fresh csection still on hourly checks and being asked to admit an induction a fair assignment? I am working nights in a LDRP unit. When you admit an induction at 05:30 you keep it and have to report on it,as well as doing 15 minute checks on it until 7-7:15. I ended up with 7 pts to report on. I did not get to even look at my other 6 from 5:30 on. Please help?

[jenrninmi, MSN, RN]

No way.

[babyktchr, BSN, RN]

I guess it would kind of depend on what is going on in the unit at the time. Certainly with the assignment you described...I would NEVER have asked you (as a charge nurse) to admit an induction. If you were postpartum nurse, who was labor nurse(s)?? Sometimes madness prevails and you gotta do what you gotta do, and taking on more is part of the game, especially if it is busy or you are short staffed (or both). Is it fair or safe....heck no. I know when it get busy at 0530, and it seems to always be that way, the inductions and stuff have to wait. There is just nothing I can do. Inductions aren't critical in the food chain at the moment. We don't have ours come in that early, and for that reason. Our scheduled sections do though, so there are times we are struggling to prep them.

When you say you have 6 postpartums...is that mom/baby couples?? If so..that alone is out of standard.

[bagladyrn, RN]

That is a heavy assignment! As others have said, if the night was slamming - all other nurses busy with active labors/delivering moms, I could see being asked to "admit" the induction to the degree of: get her in a bed, on the monitor, give her her papers to sign, if there is time, start filling out the paperwork for admit. If my others were stable, I might manage to get an IV in (but I'm really fast with those). I would not be able to start the induction itself (wouldn't be safe with this kind of staffing anyway). I'm not sure why you would have needed to do 15 min. checks on her if she were not in labor or already on meds. Documentation of a reactive NST should have been sufficient for admission purposes. The next shift could have taken over from here and gotten the induction started.

[jenrninmi, MSN, RN]

If the unit was that busy, the induction would have been cancelled for at least the next day, or hours down the road when a labor nurse was available. We wouldn't have even had her come in as once she's through our doors, we're responsible for her and the baby.

[Shelia L. Hicks]

6 Moms. The charge nurse admitted one , the outpatient nurse admitted two and we had 1 other nurse that had 6 moms too.